"My name is Madelene Boudreaux. I just had my 51st birthday and my present was cancer."

So begins Boudreaux's online blog, "Mimi's in the Pink," started in October 2008, just after her diagnosis of stage 2 breast cancer.

The wife and self-described high-octane mother of eight decided to chronicle her experiences by blogging online as a form of therapy for herself and in the hopes that others might benefit. The result is a raw, honest account of her physical, emotional and spiritual journey through cancer.

'Things changed overnight'

Boudreaux was at a friend's house trying on dresses for her daughter's bridal shower when she commented about dimples under her arm that extended to her breast.

"I said, 'This is so gross. It looks like cellulite or something,'" she recalled.

Boudreaux had actually found a lump in her breast but wasn't worried because she has dense breast tissue and fibroids, so breast lumps are not uncommon.

Her friend pressed her to get a mammogram and ultrasound. She waited a month or two, until after her daughter's wedding, to see about it.

It was cancer.

"Things just changed overnight," she wrote. "My life as it existed is changed."

Boudreaux underwent a lumpectomy. Tissue was removed from her breast along with all the lymph nodes on that side. She had the most common type of breast cancer, hormone-driven, not genetic, the tumor was only 1.2 centimeters and there was only a speck of cancer in one lymph node.

While the prognosis was good, she would have to undergo chemotherapy and radiation.

"Chemo was so frightening to me," she said recently. "It was this debilitating thing I had to do and I knew I would be sick from it."

"It was just so frightening and, because I have eight children, I thought, 'How are we going to manage? I won't be able to work much. How are we going to manage financially and emotionally?'" she said.

Even before the chemo drugs changed her physical appearance, Boudreaux felt changed by the presence of cancer.

"Whenever I look in the mirror I don't really recognize myself because everything seems different and changed, not really in a bad way, but just not the same. It's a little scary, but I do feel that I'm not alone.

"God is with me, and my family and friends make the journey easier. My heart is different. It is 'anew,' in a tender, good way."

Her first round of chemotherapy was Nov. 4, 2008. The harsh drugs affect people in different ways and in different time frames.

Boudreaux quickly learned that, for her, the nausea, pain and weakness would hit three days after each treatment.

Two weeks after her first chemo, Boudreaux woke to find her hair falling out. A hair dresser who loves clothes and makeup, one of her biggest fears was of losing her hair. Thinking it might be her last day with hair for a while, she followed through with a promise to her children. She cut it short and colored it pink.

"Day by day I am realizing I have very little control over much," she wrote. "So tomorrow if my hair starts to really fall out a lot, we will shave it all off. I can have control over the day that I go completely bald!"

Her second treatment was Nov. 19. Her Nov. 22 entry reveals her struggle to love her new self as chemo wracked her body and drained her spirit.

It is no secret that I am a vain person. I love trendy clothes and shoes and have a serious addiction to lipstick, mascara and eye makeup. It is part of who I am. It is my job! People pay me to help them look good! So at the onset of my hair finally beginning to fall out, I felt myself slide into a frenzy of emotion! I had read that 70-90 percent of the women who have breast cancer's worst fear is the hair loss. I now understand that high percentage rate. It really feels sucky to lose your hair, no lie! Our hair is such a part of who we are as women. And even though I have spent all of my parenting years saying, 'It's what's on the inside that counts,' now I have to embrace those words myself and make them really count. So digging as deep as I can, I am seeing that I truly do love myself. I love my sense of humor. I love my gutsiness for opening my heart to having a big family (I didn't really know how hard it would be). I love my creative mind and my willingness to participate in life. I love my devotion to my friends and theirs to me. I love my willingness to admit my failures and imperfections (only new found since the cancer). I love my eyes because they can't hide my smile. I love my positive attitude (sometimes hard to muster lately) and I love my willingness to be honest. This may all seem boastful, but I feel it's important to embrace our 'good stuff.' It is the essence of what God created in us. Somewhere in all of this I am finally 'getting' that God doesn't want us sitting around doubting our deservedness! He doesn't want us wasting precious moments focusing on our inadequacies and our faults and failings. He wants us to rise up and feel empowered by the experience that life is providing. He wants us to empower others. We can praise him through our grateful hearts, even when our life is challenged, because no matter what, there is always something good going on in our circle! There are blessings even in the worst of days. I want my children to learn early in life to appreciate all the goodness they possess before they doubt the very blessings they have inside.

But sometimes, even when we know all the 'good stuff,' life just creeps up and saps you of your Mojo! That happened to me on the third day of this second round of chemo. I felt like crap, nauseated as hell, and got really depressed laying in bed with hair shedding all over my pillow. So today when I woke up with hair in my mouth, I decided it was Shave the Head Day! ... It was emotional, to say the least. It is REAL! REALLY REAL! ... I do this blog to express myself, to purge and cleanse all that rises from my soul, to help me cope, but somewhere along the way God whispered to me that it was for you, too. I think that sometimes we all stand guarded with our words for fear of not saying the 'right' thing, while the recipient of your unspoken words waits anxiously to gather every morsel God can send through those we love. I love you all so much. I guess today wasn't a total waste of hairspray after all!

Ricky Boudreaux comforts his wife, Madelene, after shaving her head during her battle with breast cancer.(Photo: Submitted photo)

The third of Boudreaux's four rounds of chemo was in early December. She describes learning to give in to the fatigue and taking to her bed.

"I remember laying in bed, curled up almost in a fetal position because my stomach burned like fire from the chemo. I had that look of a cancer patient. It was hard for me to look at myself because it just wasn't me," Boudreaux recalled.

She spent a lot of time alone in bed, describing it once in her blog as her best friend. Her immediate family — her husband, Ricky, and children — were there for her, sometimes curling up in bed next to her and holding her hand when she was tired or not feeling well.

Other friends, family and acquaintances brought food to the house, sent cards and prayed for her.

But the self-described people person said she felt very lonely at times. People didn't know what to say or didn't want to intrude so they stayed away.

"It was lonely, yet I just grabbed hold of my faith and my belief in God. Looking back, the loneliness is what made me grow," she said recently.

Her advice to the family and friends of others battling illness is to be there for them, visit them, even if you don't know what to say.

Christmas was difficult for Boudreaux, who "laid around holding my stomach, trying to find ways to ease up the discomfort."

She wrote a few days later, "I have realized that I was truly not prepared for the emotional toll the chemo would take on me ... Feelings of inadequacy and fatigue sometimes consume my once optimistic mind and it takes everything I have to make it through a day.

"I can admit that sometimes I am not comfortable in my own skin, that somehow Madelene has gone away and I try to figure out ways to find her again. I have found comfort in tear drops that cleanse me from the inside. I used to have no patience for my tears. Now I relish in knowing that as each one rolls down my face it has a purpose in my healing."

Life after cancer

The new year brought the end of the worst of the chemotherapy treatments. Boudreaux suffered lingering joint pain from daily medication and had a scare when something showed up in a mammogram.

"Life after cancer!" she wrote in May 2010. "I like the sound of that ... AFTER cancer!"

On June 12, 2010, high school sweethearts Madelene and Ricky Boudreaux celebrated their 34th wedding anniversary the day after the wedding of their daughter, Blanche.

She described marrying young, getting pregnant six months after the wedding, then losing their first baby, a boy, who was stillborn. They grew closer as a couple after that and relied on their wedding vows to carry them through the struggles of parenting eight children.

"And then came cancer," she wrote. "If at that point I had ever doubted my husband's commitment to me, I am convinced now that love can be so deep, it lives in our very core, in our soul, where it is so profound when we share that kind of love, it is Christ himself loving our spouse! I have received that love from my spouse, my life partner! I rejoice in our pain because it gave us an opportunity to love so deeply!"

Madelene Boudreaux and husband Ricky share a smile over their bald heads in 2008.(Photo: Submitted photo)

As a participant in a breast cancer symposium in 2010, Boudreaux met other women who shared their cancer stories. It was a reminder about perspective and always seeing the glass as half full.

"I had always thought that losing my breast would be the ultimate horror of breast cancer, so when I was able to keep my boobies and just have a lumpectomy and chemo and radiation, I felt relieved," she wrote. "As one of the ladies shared her chemo story, a young survivor said, 'I can't even imagine the trials of chemo. I was so lucky to just have a double mastectomy.'"

Even though the cancer treatment "stole a whole year of normalcy" from the Boudreaux family, there was joy and celebration, as well. Two daughters were married, two grandchildren were born and birthdays were celebrated and cherished more than ever before.

Madelene Boudreaux models her new 'do.(Photo: Submitted photo)

On Dec. 26, 2010, Boudreaux wrote her final blog entry.

As I think about how blessed I am with family and friends, I have noticed that at times I carry a sense of uneasiness in my heart, like there is something lurking, waiting to snatch my joy! (AKA, the devil!) I recently had to endure a long-awaited test result that showed some abnormal stuff. It all turned out okay, but my ability to trust seems to vanish when it comes to concerns of my health. And I have recently learned that the cancer of a new found young friend has returned, so I would ask that you all join me in prayer for a miracle for her. She has a strong faith and a desire to see her children grow up. She said her friend reminded her that we are all terminal! So we must get on with living now! Life is certainly shifting. Grandbabies bring us so much joy and laughter, while on a lower note, my mom is aging right before my eyes and Alzheimer's is stealing her memory away a little more every day. ... The cycle of life is challenging, to say the least, but it is what it is. And most of it we can't change. What I try to remind myself to do is appreciate all that is good in my life and not try to complain about what is not right. This coming year may bring an assortment of wonderful experiences and then maybe some difficult ones, too. Grant me the patience to deal with both.

Boudreaux recently re-read what she wrote during her journey with cancer and chemo and shared this final insight.

"I became fully aware when I was going through it. Everything's on the outside," she said. "I asked and prayed for God to use me and this experience. When I read it, I can't fathom that I wrote that. That didn't come from me. It came from God."

Read Madelene Boudreaux's blog at http://mimisinthepink.blogspot.com/

Madelene Boudreaux and three of her daughters, pretty in pink.(Photo: Submitted photo)